


Smile

by Orianne (morganya)



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-27
Updated: 2003-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:13:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/Orianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They think she's fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile

Everyone knows about them. It's an elephant in the living room. Kathy sits on the green room couch, lukewarm coffee in her hand. She shades her eyes from the bright overhead lights. Ryan stands against the wall; Colin is shrugging on his jacket, almost ready to leave. Ryan's eyes follow every move Colin makes. He's not quite smiling. It's only a small, proud quirk of the mouth.

She thinks of Ryan as a tiger at rest. Outwardly placid and self-contained, but always alert, always watching. He's always been that way.

And Colin?

She swallows the rest of her coffee. Better not to consider the question.

"Good job tonight, Kath," Colin says. He putters around the green room, looking for something he's lost. He's always losing something --- his reading glasses, his wallet, keys, books, his laptop computer once.

"I wonder how you put up with it,' Ryan says. "All those dick jokes. I get embarrassed at them sometimes."

She smiles and runs a hand through her hair. It feels brittle; she's been dying it too much. "But, Ryan, half of the dick jokes come from you." Faux-innocently.

Ryan grins at her. Colin looks up and smiles at her, then at Ryan. His smile changes when he turns it on Ryan; it becomes affectionately tolerant, an 'oh, you' smile. Kathy wishes she had her sunglasses or that she smoked cigarettes, to give herself something to do. She keeps smiling. The overhead lights are blazing right into her eyes, throbbing through her cerebral cortex.

She touches her hair again. When she takes her hand away, blond strands, dark at the root, are stuck to her fingers. When they cast her, they said that she looked better as a blond. They didn't want another dark-haired woman. Denny had dark hair. Karen had dark hair. Josie, back when the show was still in the UK, had dark hair. She just smiled and nodded. The nights before she flies into Los Angeles, she stands in the shower, hands encased in plastic, her nose burning with the smell of peroxide. If they wanted a blond, she'd become one.

"You about ready?" Ryan says to Colin.

"No, not yet. Need to find my keys."

Ryan rolls his eyes at Kathy and shakes his head. She understands the message very well; *what am I going to do with him?* She feels something bridle inside her. Her instinct is to spit, "Don't bring me into this. I'm not involved with you." She knows there's no reason to feel this way. Ryan is a friend, and in some ways her boss. He and Colin were the ones who got her the job.

No. It was Colin who'd gotten her the job, mentioning her to Ryan, enlisting Ryan's help in talking to the network brass. Good old Colin, helping out a pal. She'd been happy doing long-form up in Toronto, doing a TV show or writing a play occasionally, but the money wasn't exactly pouring in. She was beginning to have to fight to pay the mortgage. Colin had come up and persuaded her. He'd said to her, "Kath, you'll do so well. You're so funny. You'll blow them away." He'd been rubbing her back, squeezing her shoulder. His hands were soft and strong. And she said yes, yes, Colin, I'll try. Her background wasn't in short-form; she didn't think in quick one-liners. But she went down and auditioned and because Colin had asked Ryan to help, she'd gotten on. And for a while, she was happy.

The notes came later on, after she'd done a few tapings. They told her, "Try to keep it clean." They said, "You're so good at being supportive; don't showboat." They said, "You'll be in more games next time." They said, "Maybe you could wear a skirt next time around."

One time, they'd given a note that read, "You're still new at this. Maybe you should just sit back until you get more experienced." It was all she could do to keep from saying, "I was at Second City! I won for Best Female Improvisor at the Canadian Comedy Awards! I was in This Sitcom is Not to Be Repeated! Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist!" She wanted to screech like a parody of a Hollywood diva, "Don't you know who I am?" She didn't. She whispered, "Water off a duck's back," to herself and kept working. If she was working, that was all that mattered.

And then they took her voice.

She'd watched the episode, back home on her couch. She watched the guys talking and goofing around, and her, just sitting and smiling. She remembered speaking during that taping. She must have said something. But there she was on TV, large as life, smiling vacantly, silent. A prop. They'd made her into a fucking prop. She sat on the couch, staring at the television, and when she couldn't even speak to curse she realized that they'd taken her voice away. There was a Native story that being caught on film stole your soul. They'd put her on film and stolen her voice.

Colin had called her, his voice shaking. "They have no right," he kept saying, "They have no right." He said he'd speak to someone, Ryan, Drew, Dan. She said, regaining her voice for a minute, "Don't."

"Why?"

She didn't know what to say. She didn't know how to explain that she didn't want him going to the suits for her. Colin broke out in hives at the thought of confrontation; she didn't want to put him through that. She didn't know how to explain that she was afraid. Afraid of making noise and getting fired. She knew her place was shaky to begin with. She didn't want to say that she was afraid of getting fired and not being able to work with him again. She said, "I'll handle it myself."

She spoke to Dan, hiding her shaking hands behind her back. She said, "Maybe I could talk in the next show that airs," and Dan had given her a sympathetic smile and said, "Of course, of course." But she knew Dan only had so much power. So she just nodded and smiled. She smiled until her face hurt.

Colin finally finds his keys. He turns to her, squeezing her shoulder. She looks up. His eyes have little flecks of green in them. "Bye, Kath."

"Bye, Kathy," Ryan echoes.

"See you," she says mildly, already watching them leave together.

She could quit. Say she didn't like Los Angeles, that she wanted to focus on writing another play, say that it's not you, it's me. And then? Americans pay better. She can pay the mortgage and buy a few extra niceties. She has time to work on other projects. Nobody forces her to come down and work. She knows that if Colin suspected she wasn't happy, he'd be the first one to tell her to leave. "You don't need to take this," he'd say. "I mean, I love working with you, but I don't want to keep you here if you don't want to." That was Colin.

Colin. It's always Colin. Because she always has the thought that one day she'll catch him before he leaves, before he meets up with Ryan. She would say, Let's have a drink, old friends, we haven't hung out for so long. All the subtle tricks. Let's go to the bar at my hotel, I hear it's really nice, oh, wait, I just remembered, I want you to read this script for me, new project, just practicing my lines, ha, ha, ha. Here, I'll open the minibar, it'll make it go faster, oh, God, look at the time. Jesus, I'm so sorry, look, you've been drinking, why don't I call the front desk, they'll send up a cot, I'll sleep there tonight. Really, I feel just awful about this, here, lie down on the bed, wow, I got a little dizzy. I think I'm just going to sit for a minute, maybe I should lie down too, maybe I should put my head right here, maybe I should put my arms like this, maybe I should hold you, kiss you, love you. Maybe…

She shakes her head violently. She hears her breath shuddering. The worst of it is that she would rather have one tenth of Colin than none at all. She can't think about not seeing him, not working with him, not speaking with him, even as she realizes he doesn't love her, will never love her.

The green room door opens again. Colin comes in, smiling sheepishly. "Forgot my wallet."

"You're such a spaceshot," she says.

"So I've heard." He gives her a hug. She bites the inside of her lip but manages to smile. "Night, Kathy."

"Sure. Good night." The door shuts after him.

She rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. It's the lights. They keep the lights so bright in here, it hurts her eyes. If someone comes in and sees her crying, she'll tell them it's only the lights.


End file.
